Polymer microarrays for cellular high-content screening

Methods Mol Biol. 2011:706:171-80. doi: 10.1007/978-1-61737-970-3_14.

Abstract

Polymer microarrays as platforms for cell-based assays are presented, offering a unique approach to high-throughput cellular analysis. These high-throughput (HT) platforms are used for the screening of new materials with the purpose of first finding substrates upon which a specific cell line would adhere and second to gain a rapid understanding of the interactions between cells and biomaterials. Arrays presented here are fabricated using pre-synthesised polymers by contact printing via a robotic microarrayer. These large arrays of polymers are then incubated with cell cultures and the results obtained are used to significantly help the design of synthetic biomaterials, implant surfaces and tissue-engineering scaffolds by finding correlations between their chemical structure and their biological performance. The flexibility of polymer microarrays analysis not only greatly refines our knowledge of multitude of cell-biomaterial interactions but could also be used in biocompatibility assessments as novel biomarkers.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Benzimidazoles / metabolism
  • Biocompatible Materials / chemistry
  • Carbocyanines / metabolism
  • Cell Adhesion
  • Cell Culture Techniques / methods
  • Cell Line
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Fluorescein-5-isothiocyanate / metabolism
  • Fluorescent Dyes / metabolism
  • High-Throughput Screening Assays / methods*
  • Humans
  • Indoles / metabolism
  • K562 Cells
  • L Cells
  • Mice
  • Microarray Analysis / methods*
  • Phalloidine / metabolism
  • Polymers / chemistry*
  • Rhodamines / metabolism
  • Substrate Specificity

Substances

  • Benzimidazoles
  • Biocompatible Materials
  • Carbocyanines
  • Fluorescent Dyes
  • Indoles
  • Polymers
  • Rhodamines
  • cyanine dye 3
  • Phalloidine
  • DAPI
  • Fluorescein-5-isothiocyanate
  • bisbenzimide ethoxide trihydrochloride